The Tiger and His Stripes

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The Tiger and His Stripes William Lyons Analysis, Vol. 44, No. 2. (Mar., 1984), pp. 93-95. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-2638%28198403%2944%3A2%3C93%3ATTAHS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J Analysis is currently published by The Analysis Committee.

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MORE ON EMPIRICAL SIGNIFICANCE

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sentences, b u t the members of that class are a 'fancifully fancyless medium of unvarnished news' indeed.' Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, U.S.A.

O M. L. POKRIEFKA 1984

[ l ] M. L. Pokriefia, 'Ayer's Definition of Empirical Significance Revisited', Analysis, 43.4, October 1983, pp. 166-70.

' I would like to thank Herbert Hendry for helpful discussion.

THE TIGER AND HIS STRIPES

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N a passage in Content and Consciousness (Routledge, 1969), Daniel Dennett put forward an argument against the mental image theory of imagination in the following terms: Consider the Tiger and his Stripes. I can dream, imagine or see a striped tiger, but must the tiger I experience have a particular number of stripes? If seeing or imagining is having a mental image, then the image of the tiger must - obeying the rules of images in general - reveal a definite number of stripes showing, and one should be able to pin this down with such questions as 'more than ten?', 'less than twenty?'. . .Of course in the case of actually seeing a tiger, it will often be possible to comer the tiger and count his stripes, but then one is counting real tiger stripes, not stripes on a mental image. (pp. 136-3 7)

The implication, of course, is that one cannot count the stripes on an imagined tiger, so it cannot be the case that imagination involves images. Now the usual reply to this argument of Dennett is that one cannot count the stripes on an imagined tiger, not because an imagined tiger is not really an image, but because it is a poor, indistinct image. Thus, for example, Alastair Hannay suggests that counting the stripes is impossible because an imagined tiger is 'fluttering, febrile, vanishing', 'evanescent', 'vague' and 'fleeting' (Mental Images - A Defence, Allen & Unwin, 19 71, Ch. V, Section 3) while J. A. Fodor argues for the same conclusion because an imagined tiger is 'labile', 'blurred', and there are 'many visual properties which would not be pictured' (The Language of Thought, Crowell, 1975, Ch. 4, pp. 187-91). I want t o suggest a better defence against Dennett's argument, for I shall attempt to show that both Dennett's argument and the

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ANALYSIS

usual reply t o it miss a fundamental point about the nature of imagination. Put bluntly, my suggestion is that one cannot be more sophisticated visually in imagination than one is in perception itself because imagination is parasitic on perception, and that if this principle is attended to, one will realise that one can count stripes on imagined tigers. But let us go back t o the beginning. Instead of cornering a tiger (which would not be the time t o attempt t o count his stripes!) let us settle him down t o his first hefty feed of the day. Now let each of us move closer and attend t o the task of counting his stripes (given that we have decided on a procedure for individuating stripes). Let us suppose also that the tiger in fact has 273 stripes. Now one cannot see, much less count, 273 stripes in one go. So one scans slowly up the hind legs, along the sides, and so on. The bravest among us might stick out a finger t o help the process along. The point is, in ordinary perception, counting stripes will involve a large number of focused perceptions; 273 if we take each stripe singly (less if we feel we can take them in twos, threes, etc.). Now, in regard to imagination, we can expect no better than what is possible in perception, for it is sensible t o suppose that, whatever be the pictorial or image-like nature of imagination, it is pictorial or image-like in so far as it is based in some way as yet unknown upon ordinary perception. So t o count stripes in imagination will involve a series of images of single stripes (perhaps with our finger pictured as picking out the stripes), repeated 273 times. That is how t o count stripes in imagination because that is the only way we can count them in ordinary perception. Dennett, Hannay and Fodor all seem t o presume that, if imagining a tiger involves an image of a tiger, then counting the stripes on an imagined tiger must involve the fruitless task of holding that image very still, and then trying steadily t o pick out stripes on the side of this tiger-image, and finally trying t o count them. This is very revealing. In perception, there is a holding steady and a working over when counting stripes on a tiger but not a holding steady of a perceptual 'snapshot' of the whole tiger over which we then work steadily. What we hold still in order t o work over with a long series of focuses on particular stripes will be a real whole tiger which we have steadied in some way, we hope. Since imagination is parasitic on perception, then the imagined counting of stripes can at most be a repeat in imagination of what we d o in perception, that is, engage in a long series of 'snapshots' of single, fingered stripes. We d o not have a real tiger in our heads t o hold steady, and any single image of an imagined tiger will be of no more use for counting than would a single holistic percept of a tiger. In a single holistic percept, we can only take in, at most, a few salient tiger features - that it is striped (but not how many stripes there are, nor the precise hues), that it is quiet and eating (but not exactly what it

THE TIGER AND HIS STRIPES

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is eating), etc. - so we would get nowhere at all if, to count stripes on a real tiger, we had to use our few-salient-features, 'snapshot' percept of the whole tiger rather than the real tiger. Likewise we will get nowhere at all if, in imagination, we try to count stripes by concentrating on an image of a whole tiger. T o demand of imagination that the one imagining be able t o hold steady the 'picture', which is an imagined tiger, and then run a finger along the body of the pictured tiger, and thereby t o count the stripes, is to misunderstand not merely the nature of imagination but also the nature of perception. One can count stripes on imagined tigers but one must do so in the same way as one counts stripes on real tigers.

The University, Glasgow G I 2 8QQ

O WILLIAMLYONS1984

GREEN ON DICTATORS AND DEMOCRACIES

ESLIE GREEN, in 'Dictators and Democracies' (ANALYSIS 43.1, anuary 1983) claims that one of the two following precepts should be abandoned: '(1) a social choice rule is democratic only if there exists n o dictator' or 'the economically rational individual should (2) participate in a social choice only if the benefits of participation outweigh the costs' (p. 58). Green argues that, by (2), a rational voter ought to vote only if the benefits of participation in voting, multiplied by the probability of his vote swinging the outcome, exceed the costs t o him of voting. Such a calculation will result in its being rational to vote only in very small electorates, since in 'any large electorate p (the probability of one's vote swinging the outcome) approaches zero' (p. 59). One may, according to Green, go further. The benefits of voting, multiplied by p, will be likely to exceed the costs only in electorates of one. 'But if there is an electorate of one then the efficacy of the preferences of those individuals who have n o vote is zero. If one individual's preferences have a weight of one and all other preferences weigh zero, then there exists an individual whose preferences are automatically society's preferences independent of the preferences of all other individuals, and therefore the condition of nondictatorship is not satisfied. Thus the rational voter should (3) participate in social choice only if there is a dictator' (p. 59). From (1) and (3), furthermore, it follows that 'the rational voter should (4) participate in a social choice only if it is not democratic' (p. 59). If it were objected that a benefit cost calculation will show it is rational to vote in more cases than that of an electorate of one,

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